The Failure of Moderate Muslims

A Muslim chaplain at New York University, Khalid Latif, noting a recent debate at the university on the question of whether or not "Islam Is a Religion of Peace," published a piece for CNN Monday saying that the answer is that "Islam is a religion of peace, or it isn't." Latif explains that "there is no one answer," for "the Muslim community is by no means monolithic and viewing us as one is problematic. We are diverse." Yet his own stance toward Islamic jihadists reveals the abject failure of self-proclaimed moderate Muslims in general to deal adequately with the global crisis within the Islamic world.

Latif complains that Muslims "find ourselves in a moment in which we are very narrowly understood. That normative understanding is equated to something radical, despite the fact that 93 percent of Muslims are found to be far from radical according to recent Gallup surveys." Compounding this difficulty, he says, is that "typically when one of us from that 93 percent steps up to speak, we are vehemently told that we either do not represent Islam or even more absurdly that we are not truly practicing Islam's teachings."